


It Wasn't Real (But We Were Happy)

by lurkinglurkerwholurks



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, Bruce Wayne is Trying, Child neglect (sort of?), Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Middle child syndrome, POV Alternating, Tim drake needs a hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-26
Updated: 2018-07-17
Packaged: 2019-05-29 03:28:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15064109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lurkinglurkerwholurks/pseuds/lurkinglurkerwholurks
Summary: The midnight bell had rung for Tim not on a date of any significance, but during an ordinary night at the Manor.Tim Drake is a sad, sad boy, and Bruce Wayne is trying his best. (But sometimes his best isn't enough.)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Two vital notes. First, this is not a suicidal ideation fic. I don't care if that's a spoiler. Dramatic tension is not worth a person's mental health, so don't worry. However, Tim does deal with the belief that no one will miss him if he's gone, so if that's a triggering thing for you, tread carefully.
> 
> And second, this fic is completely written and ready to go! I'll be posting one chapter a week until everything is up, but no worrying about when/if the next chapter will arrive from me, hooray!

It was said that time was the great equalizer, but Tim didn’t know how that could be true. Time seemed to touch everyone differently, and everyone grappled with it in their own way. 

Dick bobbed in its streams like a vacationer in a tube. He let it carry him along, neither struggling nor straining, but enjoying the ride wherever its path led. Jason floundered, striding through the water until his steps inevitably found the gap of his stolen life. He would lose his footing and plunge under, only to burst above the current with great, heaving breaths and push on determinedly once more. 

Damian did his best to speed ahead of time, forever straining to reach the point when he would be older, taller, smarter, more independent. Time did its best to keep him at a steady pace, but still he fought, and every time Tim looked again, Damian had won more ground. Cass frolicked in time, its influences swirling around her with as little effect as gravity seemed to have during her rooftop swoops.

Bruce, Bruce battled with time. He opposed it, stopped it, pushed it back. Shrouded Manor halls and untouched rooms stood in testament to his never-ending war. Bruce was determined to halt time, and there were moments where it seemed that he might win. And even when time had its way, dragging him into a slip centuries away from home, he took to it like a fish in a flood, until he was once more the master and champion.

And Tim? Tim did none of these. He didn’t fight, didn’t frolic, didn’t float, didn’t fall. Tim marched. Not with any zeal, but with the grim determination of a prisoner. 

It was also said that all things must come to an end, and that was a saying Tim believed without question. The background static of his life was made of ticking clocks, falling grains, winding shadows. That didn’t mean that he was never surprised. A good many endings surprised him, horrified him, came whistling out at him like fists in the dark. But it was only their timing that caught him off guard, never their existence, like turning the crank on a silenced jack-in-the-box. Without the music, he could only guess when the pop and cackle would come, but he knew the lurch in his stomach was inevitable.

From the moment Tim stepped onto the doorstep of Wayne Manor and pressed his finger to the bell, he could hear the ceaseless ticking of the countdown clock. At first, he ignored it. His focus was on helping Bruce, on helping Batman, on keeping his hero on his feet and fighting to see another day. Tim knew the end was coming, but it was still a long way off, and he was able to throw himself into his task with fervor. He wasn’t wanted—Bruce made that clear from the start with his slamming doors and bear-like growls—but Tim didn’t mind. He was needed here, and that was what mattered.

So he propped Bruce up. He pulled Dick back into the fold. He kept company with Alfred. He dug into the mechanics of Wayne Enterprises and the guts of Gotham. Tim worked and fought and sweat and bled and cried and never, ever stopped, because the _tick tick tick_ that nipped at his heels never stopped either.

At first, Tim had worried that Jason’s return would start the drain on the hourglass in earnest, but that worry had proven in vain. Jason had come back to Gotham so broken that he had shattered the family with him, and Tim had had to start again. In a perverse way, he was almost glad. He didn’t want to see the others hurt. But if they were hurting, then he was needed. And oh, how he needed to be needed. _Needed_ meant he could stay.

So he listened to Bruce’s doubts and Dick’s heartache. He worked alongside Babs, adding another set of deft fingers to her technological orchestra. He brought Stephanie into the fold, another lost child with Jason’s mouth and Dick’s pluck. He tried to play peacemaker, pleading for Jason even after the older man left him gasping and bleeding from a stab wound to the side. Because Bruce needed Jason, and Jason was still the high-flying Robin Tim had worshipped from afar, no matter what colors he wore now.

Then Damian arrived, and Tim could hear the bells tolling their final hour. If he had been sensible, if he had been the same lonely boy who knew to keep one ear on the clock and one eye on the door, he would have done what was needed. He would have relinquished Robin’s domino rather than suffer it to be taken from him. He would have returned to his parents and the empty house that they were never in. He would have saved Bruce from the clutches of time, yes, but then he would have retired to his hollow life. He would have let his uncle take him. He would have turned down the offer of adoption that whispered that he was still _needed_ and maybe even _wanted_ and focused on the reality that he knew to be true.

But Tim had not been sensible. He had been terrified.

Whereas Jason had been a broken piece of the family to be mended, Damian was a threat. His claims to the Wayne name made him a danger to Bruce, his arrogant ways a thorn to Dick, his violent philosophies a menace to Cass, his ties to Talia a peril to Jason. Tim’s focus should have been on mitigating that threat, on easing Damian into his place in the family. But Tim had felt the knife’s edge of Damian’s existence against his neck and panicked.

For once, Tim had been selfish. For once, he had fought back—against Damian’s encroachment, against the grains of time slowly burying him alive, against the weight of panic pressed against his lungs. He knew he was doing wrong, that his actions were hurting the people he loved most, but who could blame a drowning man for struggling? (Tim. Tim blamed himself mercilessly.)

Ironically, Tim’s panic over being pushed out created a large enough rift that he was required to stay. He stayed and rescued the man he considered a father, who chose to keep the sons that battered Tim. He stayed and supported the friend he considered a brother, who replaced and dismissed him. He stayed, and he mended, and he worked, and he folded all of his hurt up into a tiny square and stuck it in his pocket to only be examined when he was alone and tired.

But somehow, without Tim noticing, life improved. He stuck it out as Red Robin, relinquishing his old title with reluctance, then acceptance. He carved out his own place amid the louder, more boisterous members of the Wayne family, and did enough that he felt like he was still earning his place. He even forged a tentative truce with Damian that would fluctuate sometimes into an alliance against the older boys when the situation called for it. 

So what if Tim spent much of his time hunched over a keyboard or elbow-deep in tech while the others laughed in another room? So what if he would often catch Dick and Jason roughhousing in the den, or Jason and Damian reading together in the library, or Dick and Cass doing stretches together in the Cave? There was nothing wrong with the others finding areas of common interest and enjoying them as a group. He just secretly wished that they had even thought to ask if he were interested as well.

Still, it was his fault for taking his ear off the clock. Tim had grown comfortable. He had taken his eye off the door and instead had settled into his role, sinking contentedly into the nail-scratched niche he had made. He had tried to be Dick, cheerily bobbing in the stream, and had been unprepared when life placed its hands atop his head and forced him under.

The midnight bell had rung for Tim not on a date of any significance, but during an ordinary night at the Manor. Jason had taken up camp in the den and had been watching some loud, explosion-filled blockbuster that had slowly lured the rest of the household into the room. When that movie ended, another was popped in. The couch and floor filled with bodies, and bowls of snacks magically provided by Alfred appeared in arms. Tim had been crammed on the long couch between Cass and Dick, pleased and comfortable despite Dick’s elbow in his side and Titus’s tail smacking against his shins.

Tim had gotten up somewhere in the second half of the third movie to use the restroom and upon returning had stopped in the doorway to look at his family. They hadn’t notice him, their eyes on the bright, flashing screen instead of the shadowed doorway. He didn’t mind. He liked to look without being looked at, to observe without being pinned by scrutiny. Bruce sat on the far side of the couch, uncharacteristically loose-spined and slumped down against the cushions. He had his arm flung around Damian’s shoulder, his youngest pulled to rest against his chest, while his other arm lay against the armrest, fingers dangling above Jason’s head where the man reclined on the floor. Dick had taken advantage of Tim’s absence to wriggle down so his head lay on Damian’s knee, his long legs carelessly flung across Cass’s lap and one hand outstretched to pet Titus’s rump. Cass, for her part, took advantage of Dick’s pose to prop her elbow against his ribs and cup the side of her head in her hand.

The sight of them all flung over each other like a litter of puppies made Tim smile. Even a few months ago, such a scene would have been laughably impossible, but progress had crept along, unnoticed but sure. He couldn’t remember the last time he had seen the lines in Bruce’s face ease like that. Or ever seen Jason’s frame relaxed, without the sharp edge of tension that announced he expected the world to screw him over at any second.

It made Tim smile until suddenly it didn’t.

Jason had pushed himself off the floor, complaining about his bruised ribs and selfish siblings as he shoved Dick up and threw himself between Dick and Cass. His complaints were drowned out by good-natured gripes from the others, but soon they were all settled again, bodies comfortable and slack with their eyes trained on the screen. There wasn’t a centimeter of free space on that couch. Tim’s spot was gone as if he had never existed.

He waited for a few minutes more to see if anyone would notice. Surely someone in his hyper-observant family would feel his stare and look over. Someone would sense his absence and say, “Hey, where’s Tim?” But they didn’t.

Tim couldn’t watch any longer. He went to his room and shut the door. The sound of tolling bells chased him all night, and in their fading echoes, he made his peace with what must be done.

He knew that to an outside observer, what he was doing might be considered overly dramatic, but Tim was hardly one for theatrics. The Waynes were happy. They were whole. They were as they should have been years ago—better, in fact. Which meant that the task he had assigned himself years ago, of protecting and safeguarding Bruce Wayne until he could stand on his own feet once more, had come to an end. The part of Tim that had always felt a pang at the end of _Mary Poppins_ as the once beloved nanny drifted into the sky, forgotten by the family that she loved and remembered only by a tired chimney sweep, radiated again as he lay on his bed and stared at his ceiling, listening to the distant laughter from the den.

The bell was tolling. The clock had wound down. His service was fulfilled. They had gone off to fly kites, leaving him to make his own way.

If Tim had been a braver man, a nobler man, he would have done everything at once. He could have. From the beginning, every position he had filled in Bruce’s life had been constructed with a replacement plan and an exit strategy. But, perverse fool that he was, he held out hope that his absence would make a difference. That someone would notice and stop him.

If the situation were anything less than the total destruction of his life, Tim might have compared it to a carefully planned Jenga game. He chose his moves deliberately, cautiously, each step a delicate touch as he removed himself from the lives of Bruce Wayne et al. 

He stopped showing up at the Manor, abandoning his old room completely for his small apartment and begging out of the chance dinner invitation. The invitations, never frequent, dwindled to nothing. He conducted interviews for his replacement at Wayne Enterprises, then quietly resigned with a letter left in a tray on Bruce’s desk. Only his assistant knew, or, he suspected, cared. Bruce could inform the board when he decided to visit his office next, or his replacement could if she felt bold enough.

Transferring his college credits to CalTech was easy enough, as was finding someone to sublet his apartment. Tim planned to sell the place someday but figured that step was more symbolic than a necessary part of his plan in the moment. He had worried that passing off his patrol routes would be the hardest, but that task had been depressingly easy, in the end. Half he gave to Stephanie, who was already hungering for more responsibility, and half he gave to Jason, since those blocks were closest to Jason’s own turf anyways. Divvying up the area allayed suspicion, as both assumed that he was merely easing his load and would resume his full responsibilities soon, but... 

Tim shook his head ruefully as he boxed up his Red Robin gear and addressed the package to one of Bruce’s aliases. Red Robin had been his own creation, but one that owed its origins to Dick, to Bruce. Jason had mocked him mercilessly for not even choosing a unique moniker, but Tim, in his sentimental naivety, had liked the connection with the people he thought of as his family. It wouldn’t do to bring this annotation to a closed chapter with him. He was relieved to be rid of it without raising an alarm, though the ease with which he had passed off such a huge part of his life still rubbed him raw days later.

Alfred would have noticed, had he been around, but timing his exodus to Alfred’s annual sabbatical in England had been Tim’s one act of true cowardice. Alfred would have noticed Tim’s abandonment of the Manor and would have lured him back in with calls or threatening visits from the others or the sheer guilt power of a raised eyebrow. But that wasn’t what Tim wanted. Alfred noticed _everyone_ , but Tim didn’t want to be everyone, and it wasn’t Alfred’s attention that he needed, in the end. He could survive disappearing from Gotham, if barely, but if he had to suffer through arguments and assurances that came about only because of Alfred’s puppetry, he would throw himself off the roof.

No, the hardest task had been quitting the Titans. They didn’t need Tim any more than the Waynes did, but they _wanted_ him. They were his friends. Tim couldn’t see any way to continue with the Titans, however. Not if he was going to commit to quitting the Bats and Gotham. So he told his teammates all together, like ripping off a band-aid. (So many sayings he didn’t agree with.) They hadn’t liked it, but he managed to convince them that it was his choice, his decision, and he was at peace with it. He had just left out the true _why_ of the matter. They wouldn’t understand. But he had done it, and the last of his tasks was complete. The tower swayed, but stood, and he could walk away.

So, in the end, Tim carefully, methodically cut every tie that bound him to Gotham and Bruce Wayne, and no one noticed.


	2. Chapter 2

At first, no one noticed. Looking back, that was the part that choked Bruce the worst. No one noticed, but they should have. Bruce should have.

For once, he didn’t even have the excuse of his wildly complicated life to use as a shield, because everything had settled into a rare state of equilibrium. There had been no metaphorical fires to put out at Wayne Enterprises, no literal ones in Gotham. Wayne Enterprises was, at this point, such a well-oiled machine that Bruce was more of a figurehead than anything else. He trusted Tim and Lucius to handle the day to day, so it never crossed his mind to check in. 

The team had stayed busy with the usual, low-level thugs and schemes, but each incident had been spread out across the city and contained by one or two masks. There were no emergencies, no full family team-ups. It was inefficient to wander into another masks’s chosen territory unless called, so no one did. Everyone quietly patrolled their own sector, and on the rare occasion that paths crossed, would silently nod or (if Dick) flick a jaunty salute before continuing on.

And the Manor, for once, finally, was at peace. Not quiet, not still, not without its flare-ups, of course. But it was... settled. Damian was the only child who still claimed the Manor as his sole residence, but the others passed through so frequently that it felt like the house was full again. 

Dick would often come by after a long shift in Bludhaven to unwind—holing up in Bruce’s study for a quiet chat over chess, or flopping on Damian’s bed to prattle away while Damian pretended to be annoyed. Cass spent much of her time with Steph or Babs or away handling matters of her own. Bruce did his best not to pry. It had been a hard-earned lesson, but he had relaxed his hovering ways in recent years, choosing to wait and trust that his children would come to him if they needed him. Even Jason came by—erratically, unpredictably, but often—usually with the excuse of asking Alfred’s advice about something before disappearing into the library to curl up with a book, or sprawling in the den with a movie that would inevitably lure in a sibling or two.

The days were still full. Dick’s caseload had increased, keeping him away from the Justice League and requiring Batman to step in more than usual. There had been a false alarm when a restaurant downtown had exploded—leaky gas main, not an ambitious rogue—but Bruce’s involvement had been via the Wayne checkbook instead of Batman’s cowl, and the recovery had kept him from feeling bored. Damian had caught the flu, turning the Manor into a sick ward with the usual complaints, threats, and protestations of health.

But busy though the days had been, Bruce’s life felt settled for once. Everyone was alive, well (minus Damian’s lingering sniffles), and happy. Old grudges seemed forgotten. Old hurts had been mended. Bruce’s soul was at peace, and his happiness only made the betrayal feel sharper in retrospect.

There were small clues that he should have picked up—perpetually closed doors, empty rooms, silences that should have wrapped around narrow shoulders like a warm blanket instead of sitting hollow and barren. And Bruce did notice those absences, but only fleetingly, in passing as he moved from one moment to the next, like the flicker of lights outside a moving train car. But it wasn’t enough to hold his attention, to make him sit up and take notice. And that was inexcusable.

Much later, Bruce would recall the times he sat with his phone in hand, absently tapping the side of the case with one finger as he stared at the screen. The calls he didn’t make. The unanswered texts that he let pass. He had _thought_ he was being a good dad, one that trusted and waited and respected boundaries. Not the monumental screw-up he had turned out to be. He had missed so much.

Go figure that the pebble that started the landslide was Jason. He and Bruce were in the kitchen—Bruce leaning his forearms against the counter, hands wrapped around an empty mug as he watched his son; Jason, opening and slamming cabinets with unhurried abandon, as he talked. Jason was stringing together a narrative about his week, dropping nuggets of insight and information about his daily life into Bruce’s lap disguised as complaints. Bruce was loving every minute.

“—and I don’t know how I’m going to get the blood out, I really don’t. Normal blood I can handle, but this purple ish is a pain. Remember when it was just crime lords and bozos in gimmicky costumes running around? God, I miss that. Now I gotta deal with science freaks leaking purple blood on my favorite shirt.”

Jason scowled as he set the kettle to boil and turned to arrange the tea tray to his liking. “And of course it happens during Alfred’s sabbatical. Not that I begrudge him his trip, y’know. No one deserves a vacation more than Alf. But that stain is gonna _set_ , and it’s my _favorite_. You know, the red one with the—yeah, that one. It’s so soft and I’m gonna be pissed if I have to toss it.”

Bruce’s lips twitched fondly as Jason set out the sugar and honey, positioning the tray’s contents to mimic Alfred’s usual routine. 

“All I’m saying is that if I can’t get it out, I’m gonna make Replacement pay through the nose to get me a new one.”

“Tim?” Bruce asked, speaking for the first time since Jason began his monologue. “Why Tim?”

Jason clicked the sugar tongs irritably in Bruce’s face. “Because if he hadn’t roped me in to covering his turf, I wouldn’t have gotten on the trail of that little coterie to begin with. His territory, his problem, and my shirt is safe.”

Bruce’s brow furrowed. “You’re covering Tim’s—”

Jason was already nodding. “Through Barrow Street. He’s still got the rest.”

“This is something you’ve been doing? For how long?”

“Few weeks. Kid said he was working on something and needed me to cover some ground for him until he had it squared away.” Jason shrugged in answer to Bruce’s unspoken question. “He’s still in school, right? Figured he had finals or something. I didn’t ask.”

Maybe that’s all it was. Decreasing his responsibilities in order to study would be the mature choice, and Tim had always been clearheaded in that way. Still, Bruce couldn’t quite keep the frown off his face.

He was still frowning that evening when he took a pass through the retained portion of Tim’s patrol route and ran into not Red Robin, but Spoiler.

“Spoiler?” Bruce kept his voice at a the standard Batman growl, but he couldn’t keep his head from cocking slightly. “Is there trouble?”

Stephanie perched her fists on her hips and aped his frown. “I was about to ask you the same thing. What are you doing here?”

“Looking for Red Robin.” _Where is Tim? Why are you in his territory?_

Stephanie shook her head. “Not here. I’ve been covering part of his route for a couple weeks. He said he needed to scale back and asked me to pitch in.”

“Part?”

A nod. “Yeah, from Rummy to—”

“To Barrow Street.” Bruce finished the sentence with her, his frown deepening into a worried scowl. Not that anyone who looked could tell he was worried. He looked furious. But then, Stephanie had run with the birds for a while now, and she was no idiot.

“Is there trouble?” she asked, repeating his earlier question. Then, when he didn’t answer, “Batman?”

“I... don’t know.” The admission scraped like gravel between his teeth.

The silence hung heavy in the air as Bruce struggled with his words and Stephanie waited. For once, she was patient, shifting her weight but not peppering him with questions, and he wondered how much of his unease she could read.

Finally, he said, “If you hear from Red, have him contact me.” And then he was gone, Stephanie’s agreement fading into the night behind him.

Bruce finished patrol. He didn’t know what else to do. At his insistence, Babs checked the security system at Tim’s apartment. There had been no breaches, no alarms, and the motion sensors verified that someone was alive and moving inside. 

The old Bruce would have stormed over regardless, appearing uninvited in a window, all Bat-glower and armor. But Bruce was trying to be better. He was trying to teach himself healthy boundaries, a hard task for any parent with grown children, harder for a parent still rocked from trauma, and hardest still for a traumatized parent whose children threw themselves headlong into bodily harm every night. Not that he had been a stellar example in that regard either.

So Bruce finished patrol. He went home. He stripped off his armor, showered, and padded quietly around the Manor in the soft blue pajamas Alfred had bought him one year for Christmas. He checked on Damian, drawing peace from watching his boy sleep. And then he sat on the edge of his own bed, balancing his phone in his hand as he stared at the screen, the unsent text glowing in the dark.

_ Damian has a new video game. You should come by so he can show you. _

Bruce’s finger hovered in the air, then plunged down, jabbing at the backspace until every letter was erased, just like the other aborted messages he had nearly sent that night. If given the choice, he preferred phone calls, but the kids were more comfortable with texts, especially when something was wrong, so he tried to make his club-shaped fingertips conform to the sensitive touchscreen. But tonight, the problem wasn’t his typing. Bruce kept tripping over the blue string of unanswered texts that trailed down his screen, afraid to say the wrong thing, but also afraid not to try at all.

_ You haven’t been around in a while. Is everything well? _

Jab jab jab went his finger, thumping against the screen like an jackhammer.

_ Are you angry with me? _

No, that wasn’t a conversation for—Bruce’s eyes flicked to the glowing clock on his nightstand—3:52 in the morning. He dragged a hand down his face, wincing at the sandpapery scrub of his cheeks, then lifted the phone to his ear and hit the speed dial. He listened to the phone ring, each unanswered trill dragging him deeper into a Charybdis of worry.

_We miss you. I miss you._

Not for the first time, Bruce wished he were someone else. Someone like Dick, maybe. Or Clark. Or Diana. Someone who could do... this sort of thing. Bruce flexed and tightened the fingers of his free hand, wincing slightly as his knuckles complained. He wished this were something he could punch. Or charm. Or pay off. But this was his kid. This was Tim. And he was painfully of aware of how frequently he broke his kids in the pursuit of fixing them.

_Please be okay._

The ringing stopped. The voicemail beeped. Bruce didn’t know what to say. He never did. So he put down his phone and chased after sleep that never came.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I suppose wishing you all a happy Tuesday might come across as facetious. But never fear! Chapter three will arrive next Tuesday, as promised. Not all hope is lost. This is not the end for poor Tim and his dad.


	3. Chapter 3

Bruce did his best to keep his Gotham life and his League life separate, even though the cowl traveled freely between both. It seemed cleaner that way. League life was... unusual, to put it mildly, and Gotham didn’t need any inspiration in the crazy department.

However, it was impossible to keep his League life completely compartmentalized, especially when—to Bruce’s great surprise—members of the League insisted on becoming a part of his personal life. The core of that personal life was very small and simple, just large enough for a scared child traumatized in a bloodstained alley, the father figure who took care of him, a few handpicked, deep-seated values, and six fiercely loved kids. Around this core, he mounted defense upon defense, layers of misdirection, false personas, deception, mythos, and outright rudeness. It was a good system, tried and true, and had withstood the onslaught of hordes seeking out Bruce Wayne or Batman.

But still some persisted. Though he would never say so out loud, Bruce was pleased that a few chose to politely but determinedly push through his barriers to discover what they hid. Some he pushed right back at, acknowledging their curiosity as well-meant but unwanted, but a handful kept driving forward and worked to earn the ground that they took as they went along. They battled not just for access, but for trust. Those he let stay. Barbara. Lucius. Jim, to an extent. J’onn. Diana. Clark.

Access was conditional and revokable at any time and the key to continued entry was trust—not Bruce’s alone, but his children’s as well. Bruce understood that his kids needed what he had never had—trustworthy adults they could turn to that had no power over their lives other than to listen. Bruce, in turn, trusted his friends to hold the whispered confidences and treasured hopes as tightly as they guarded his own secrets. Still, there were secrets and then there were secrets, and Bruce relied on the others to clue him in to the things they couldn’t outright say. Hence his exhausted relief when Clark called him the next day. 

Ostensibly, Clark was calling on League business. Not that Clark ever called _only_ about business. He needed to gab, to make small talk, to brag on Jon or Kon or Lois, to spin long yarns about the best new dog that he pet that day. It was the Midwesterner in him. Bruce, most decidedly not a Midwesterner, bore it as much of the rest of the country did—with amusement, fondness, a little befuddlement, and no small amount of patience.

Today Bruce could tell that Clark was trying to work his way up to something. His anecdotes were too carefully unrelated, his small talk too elliptical. Bruce, for his part, was too worried and distracted to let Clark’s chatter unspool his tension the way it normally did. He paced around the Cave, the phone pinned between his ear and shoulder as he tidied everything he could get his hands on. The Cave was one place that Alfred claimed no responsibility for, so it had its pockets of clutter even when the butler was at home. With Alfred gone and his worries over Tim mounting, Bruce had let its maintenance slide further than he should have. Or perhaps that was his anxiety talking.

Bruce had just bent over to pick up a pair of Damian’s sneakers when the line went quiet. Bruce didn’t register the silence at first. He had only been partially listening to Clark’s recitation of the latest farmer’s market drama happening down the block from his apartment, and Bruce’s attention had been caught by the unpleasant odor wafting from the abandoned trainers.

“So...” Clark spoke into the silence, his voice low and deliberately warm. It was his disaster voice, the one he used when speaking with traumatized victims, and it made Bruce’s ears prick. “How are you holding up?”

“Holding up?” Bruce repeated, voice inflectionless. It wasn’t the question he had been expecting. He straightened and placed the shoes in the crook of his arm, grimacing again as the smell hit him anew.

Clark hummed. It was his prompting hum.

“What, pray tell, am I supposed to be holding up against?”

Bruce knew the huff was coming before Clark’s breath rattled in his ear.

“You don’t need to deflect, Bruce. Kon told me. And I’m not saying we need to discuss your feelings or anything. God knows that’s _your_ Kryptonite. I’m just saying I know stuff like this has a tendency to rattle you, even if you don’t like to admit it.”

“What did Kon tell you?” Bruce pressed. Anything Kon knew came from the Titans, and that meant it came from Tim. What had Tim told Kon?

“Bruce.”

“Clark.”

“You really didn’t think I’d find out that Tim was moving?” Clark asked. His tone said he wasn’t mad, just disappointed, and Bruce wondered when he had been slotted into the recalcitrant child category. Then Clark’s words finally cleared his brain.

“Moving?” Bruce repeated. He had stopped walking, still clutching Damian’s shoes, and shifted his phone to his hand.

“Kon told me about Tim quitting the Titans and moving out west,” Clark continued, oblivious to the ringing in Bruce’s ears. “I know he’s an adult, but you like to keep your kids close. Don’t tell me you don’t. This is a big change. So I’m asking, as a friend—how are you doing, Bruce?”

Silence hissed over the line as Bruce stared across the Cave, thoughts flying in every direction. His first reaction was of total disbelief. Tim? Moving? He wasn’t. He wouldn’t. He couldn’t. But again Bruce thought of the line of unanswered texts, Tim’s undisturbed room, his disappearance from patrols.

“Kon—” To his own ears, Bruce’s voice sounded hoarse, lost. He cleared his throat and tried again. “Kon said Tim quit the Titans?”

“At least a week or two ago. It’s not like he couldn’t make it work from California with the tubes, but according to Kon, he said he wanted a clean...” Clark’s voice trailed off to mull over pieces.

A clean break. That’s what Clark had been about to say. A clean break... from the Titans or from vigilantism as a whole? From Gotham? .... From Bruce?

“Did you two have a falling out?” Clark asked quietly.

“I...” Bruce looked around the empty Cave helplessly. “I didn’t think we had.”

He needed to sit down. He needed to sit down _now._ Bruce reached out blindly for a chair, Damian’s shoes dropping from under his arm unheeded. He ended up crouching next to them, head ducked low between his bent knees and the phone still pressed to his ear. He breathed, or tried to, air hissing softly through his nose and out his mouth.

A hand clasped his shoulder. Bruce startled, dropping the phone as he caught himself against the cold concrete and shifted his weight into a defensive stance. The hand immediately disappeared, and he blinked up into the concerned face of...

“Clark?”

Bruce’s gaze flicked to the closed exit, then back to Clark.

“Came in through the house,” Clark explained, gesturing behind Bruce toward the stairs. He crouched down next to Bruce, feet hovering just off the ground as he hugged his knees. He looked ridiculous, like a little kid, or like a big man trying to talk to a little kid. Bruce couldn’t understand why he was here.

“You weren’t answering.” Clark’s voice was gentle, nonjudgmental, but concerned. He nodded toward the phone now lying on the floor. “I kept saying your name. You weren’t responding. So I came over.”

Flew at hyperspeed from his life in Metropolis to Wayne Manor in Gotham to find Batman on the edge of hyperventilating in the middle of the Batcave, more like it. And Bruce was still too poleaxed to even feel offended.

In spite of how different they were, Bruce had learned long ago to never underestimate the intelligence of Clark Kent. Clark earned that regard again today as he floated in front of Bruce and read the truth scrawled over his friend’s stunned face.

“You didn’t know he quit the Titans.”

Bruce shook his head once, lips pressed together tightly.

“You didn’t know he was moving?”

Bruce hesitated, then shook his head once more.

“ _Bruce._ ” The murmur was so full of empathetic pain that Bruce could barely bring himself to meet Clark’s gaze.

Bruce forced his limbs to loosen and uncurl out of their defensive position. He lowered himself back to the floor and sat, letting the chill seep through his slacks. Clark hovered next to him, turning slightly so they were shoulder to shoulder, facing the same direction. It was easier for Bruce when he didn’t have to look at Clark’s too open face.

“I knew something was wrong,” Bruce admitted in a low voice. “He hasn’t been around lately. No dinners or movie nights. Not answering my texts. No calls.”

He sighed and rubbed a hand down his face. “I found out last night that he’d passed his patrol off to Jason and Steph but told each of them that he was keeping the other half. Or implied it. I thought... hoped... he was just taking a break. God knows I’ve told him to often enough.”

Hoped for a break, braced for some unknown argument. That was the Wayne way, optimism underpinned by pragmatic pessimism. But even his most pessimistic outlook hadn’t prepared him for this. _Moving_ and without so much as a warning.

Bruce could feel something fluttering deep in his stomach, not quite nausea, something more than panic. Tim was leaving. Moving to the opposite side of the country. Escaping? Had he already left? Did any of the others know, or had he planned to disappear without a word?

A long silence unwound through the Cave, curling around exhibit cases and equipment. Bruce could hear the quiet whirring of the computers, the low hum of the air conditioning, the soft squeaking of the bats. He rubbed his sweaty palms on his thighs and tried to think, tried to breathe, knowing that Clark could hear the way his pulse was pounding.

“Bruce,” Clark finally goaded, voice as gentle as his hand had been minutes before. “Talk to me.”

“I don’t know what to do,” Bruce admitted.

“Do?” Clark echoed. It was a reporter’s technique, a therapist’s technique, an interrogator’s technique. Bruce knew it. It still worked.

“Do I let him go?” Bruce’s voice cracked on the last word, and he swallowed convulsively. “If he wants out of... of all this. Of Gotham. Of this life. I can’t stop him.”

He wouldn’t force Tim to stay. Bruce knew how deep his own selfishness ran, but he couldn’t be that selfish. If Tim wanted out of everything, Bruce would have to let him go.

“I thought he was your kid. He’s just a sidekick, then?” Clark asked.

Bruce’s head snapped up, eyes like burning coals. “Of course he’s my kid,” he hissed.

Clark nodded firmly, like he’d needed to hear Bruce say it. Or needed Bruce to hear Bruce say it. “So make him stay.”

Bruce’s forehead pinched as he dropped his gaze and scowled at his knees. “You know I can’t do that. I can’t keep him here if he doesn’t want to be here. You wouldn’t lock your boys away in Metropolis forever if they didn’t want to be there.”

“Who says Tim doesn’t want to be here?” Clark shook his head before Bruce could argue. “He hasn’t told you that. He didn’t tell Kon that either. All he said was that it was time he was moving on. Now he’s your kid and you know him best, but to _me_ that doesn’t sound like a kid who’s glad to go.”

“Then why would he leave?” Bruce sounded gruff, almost angry, in his attempt not to moan.

“That’s something you’d have to ask him.” Clark floated just close enough to knock his shoulder against Bruce’s. “Don’t armchair detective this, Bruce. Find out what’s going on.”

Bruce stared at his best friend, uncertainty and fear for once starkly visible in the turbulent blue of his eyes. Clark only smiled and jerked his head in the direction of the stairs. 

“Go get your kid, Bruce.”

Bruce stared a moment longer, frozen in doubt and indecision, then scrambled to his feet. He clapped a hand on Clark’s shoulder, a thanks disguised as support for crackling knees, and then he was gone, taking the stairs two at a time.

Clark smiled and closed his eyes, content to sit in the Batcave for a few moments more, the far-off chime of Lois’s laughter ringing in his ears.

* * *

He needed a car. No, keys first, then the car. No, _shoes_ first, then keys, then the car. Now that Bruce had made a decision, he felt like his veins were on fire. He needed to get to Tim’s place before Tim left for the airport, if he hadn’t left already. But what if Tim were already gone? What if—No. One crisis at a time.

For example, the crisis of the missing keys. How was it possible to own over a dozen vehicles and not be able to find the keys to _any_ of them except the one he couldn’t take out during the day? It wasn’t like any other actual resident of this house could legally drive.

Bruce growled and pushed the entire stack of mail off the table and onto the floor as he searched for the keys. No luck. Laughter filtered out of the den. He charged toward the door and pushed it open with a bang.

“Keys,” he spat out at the four startled faces that turned his way. “Where are the car keys?”

Dick was the first to speak. “What car keys?”

“ANY car keys!” Bruce didn’t raise his voice. Raising one’s voice indicated a lack of control and in an emotional crisis, Bruce was all about control. Also, it was rude and Alfred would have his hide. But a snap was as good as a scream in the Manor, especially if Cass was around. She jabbed a bony elbow into the side of the person closest to her.

“Ow!” Jason exclaimed, rubbing his ribs with a black glare that Cass quickly returned. “Uh, something wrong, B?”

“Tim’s moving.” Bruce’s eyes narrowed into slits as he regarded his children. “Did any of you know?” The blank stares he received were answer enough.

“Moving?” Dick echoed. “Like, to Bludhaven?”

Cass was already shaking her head slowly as Bruce replied, “Try California.”

The room erupted with exclamations. Bruce held up his hand for quiet.

“Tim quit the Titans.”

Another explosion of noise. Bruce raised his hand again.

“He gave half his patrol route to Jason and the other half to Stephanie without telling either of them about the other. I haven’t checked with WE, but I suspect he’s resigned there as well. He told Kon he was moving to California because ‘it was time,’ whatever that means. And I didn’t know because he hasn’t talked to me in weeks.”

Another squint and a menacing tilt of the head. “Has he talked to any of you?”

Again, there were no verbal replies, but the sheepish head shakes and guilty glances spoke volumes.

“I don’t know what happened, but I’m going to find out. And to do that, I need the bloody car keys.”

Dick plunged his arm between the couch cushions and retrieved a set. But instead of tossing them into Bruce’s open palm, he clutched them tightly and stood to his feet.

“I’m coming, too.”

Bruce was already shaking his head as Jason untangled his long limbs and stood. “If that punk thinks he can dump half his patrol on me _permanently_...”

Cass popped to her feet as well. Damian followed suit, the darkness of his scowl doing little to balance how quickly he had shot to his feet.

“He was going to ditch us, too, Bruce,” Dick said. His normally open face was nearly as stormy as Damian’s. Around the room, heads nodded.

Bruce stared at them all a moment longer, then sighed. “Let’s go get your brother.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're in the home stretch now. See you all next week for the final chapter!


	4. Chapter 4

In the end, there was depressingly little to pack. Tim’s apartment had come pre-furnished, so he didn’t have to worry about stacking drawers or dissembling his bed. His decorations were mostly functional—wall hangings chosen nearly at random, the odd plant or two, little knick-knacks that he had picked up like lint on a sock slid under the bed. The majority of things he would have cared to take with him were still at the Manor, lying dormant under the heavy assumption of his return. Tim supposed he would have to ask Alfred to box it all up once the butler returned from his sabbatical. Or maybe he would tell Bruce to donate it all to charity so Tim could truly start afresh.

Tim sighed as he looked over the small pile next to the front door. Some clothes, a few books, his computer, a photo of his parents, a few mementos from the Waynes that he couldn’t bear to part with but also couldn’t bear to look at—that was all that remained of his time in Gotham. He tried not to think too hard about how his entire life could be neatly folded into one suitcase and a duffel bag.

_Or one bottomless carpet bag,_ Tim thought bitterly. It was moments like this that made him wish he drank, just so he had something to do with his hands and the roiling discontent deep in his stomach.

Returning to his room, Tim threw himself on the bed. It was the middle of the day, but he had nothing to occupy him except to stare at the ceiling and watch the fly swooping in lazy figure-eights above his head.

He should have been gone days ago, _could have been_ gone days ago. But his customary efficiency had fled, leaving him to putz around the apartment as he sorted and boxed and cleaned every baseboard within an inch of their lives. Then, finally, one day, there had been nothing left to do. No more tasks, no more excuses. He had given the Waynes as much time as he could to acknowledge his absence, and they hadn’t. So Tim booked his plane ticket, stuck his Red Robin suit in the mail, and released his last shred of resistance to the inevitable.

Tim closed his eyes and tried to picture what came next. His taxi would arrive in about an hour. The driver would take him to the airport. Tim would walk through security, board his plane, and fly to Pasadena. Once there, he would depart, take a car to the Air BnB he had selected, and...

After that, Tim’s imagination failed him. He knew he would be attending CalTech in the fall, finishing up the studies he had started at Gotham U. He had a vague mental image of walking down a glass-free shoreline in his bare feet, of sinking his toes into toasty sand, of turning his face to the sun instead of skulking in the night. But the rest of his new life stretched empty and formless. Tim couldn’t visualize what it would look like or who he would be in it. Someone like Dick might see it as an opportunity. Jason would wrestle it to the ground with both hands and make it suit his needs. Tim just felt sad. Empty. Alone.

Tim must have dozed off as the fly buzzed over him, because the banging on the front door jerked him awake. He groaned, squinting as he lifted his arm off his eyes and looked around his sunlit room. With a second, more deliberate groan, Tim rolled off the bed and onto his knees, then pushed himself to his feet.

“Coming!” he called, stumbling out into the main area even as he tucked in his shirt and rubbed the sleep crease from his face. 

Tim deliberately did not look back at his apartment as he slung his duffel bag over his shoulder and extended the handle on his suitcase. It was just a place. It had been his for a short time, but in the end, it was just one of the many places he had left behind. Everything he cared about had left long ago.

The banging hadn’t stopped, so Tim took a breath as he opened the door, preparing to apologize for keeping the driver waiting. Instead, he found himself face to face with Bruce Wayne looming on his doormat with a raised fist paused mid-knock.

Tim’s spine stiffened with surprise and he fought not to take a step backward. He would not show emotion. Not now. Not when he was so close to being done. He stayed completely still as Bruce’s eyes flicked over his luggage, his face, and then tried to see past him to the apartment before returning to his face again.

“Bruce?” Tim finally prompted when his... when Bruce didn’t speak. He tried to think of what emergency in Gotham would land Bruce Wayne on his doorstep instead of Batman barking orders over the phone. What would make Bruce’s eyes look so flinty?

“Uh, maybe we should go inside?” 

Tim’s gaze swung to the right just beyond Bruce and focused on Dick for the first time. He hadn’t even realized the other man was there, but now that he did, unease pricked across his shoulder blades. Dick only looked that somber when death was involved and—Tim sucked in a deep breath when he saw Damian standing in Dick’s shadow. That couldn’t be good.

At Dick’s suggestion, Bruce nodded and reached to push the door aside, but Tim quickly twisted. He jammed the door with his knee, blocking their view into his empty apartment. Whatever they needed to tell him could be said out here, away from the questions the stripped room would elicit.

“Look, I’m not sure what’s going on, but I’m a little busy,” Tim began, doing his best not to stumble over his words as his mind raced to piece together what was going on. “If you keep it quick, I—”

He gasped as a hand clapped his shoulder from behind and yanked him backward. Instinctively, Tim let the momentum spin him around fully and threw a punch, only to have it caught before being pinned against the wall next to the door.

“He’s already packed!” Jason growled as he ripped the duffel from Tim’s shoulder and tossed it to the side. He had his forearm pressed against Tim’s chest, but not forcefully enough that Tim couldn’t have broken free, if he weren’t so stunned. Instead, Tim stayed where he was, hands raised in surrender. That felt metaphorical—hands always raised in surrender, even when he was the one trying to stay out of the way. The thought made him scowl.

“Did you _break into my house_?” Tim demanded, even as Bruce stepped through the doorway and scolded, “Jay! I told you to wait!”

Jason held up his free hand placatingly before jerking a thumb at Cassandra, who was currently studying Tim’s living room. “I just followed the princess.”

They were all in his living room now, Dick and Damian having followed Bruce inside and shut the door behind them. Cassandra was still slowly turning to take in the changes to his apartment, a rare frown marring her face. Jason was glaring at him like he’d... well, with Jason, any small slight would do. Damian looked ready to murder someone, but that was also nothing new. Dick kept scratching the callous on his thumb, a sure sign he was agitated. And Bruce was as stoic as an Easter Island statue. Tim felt like his head was going to explode, but he couldn’t get the words out of his mouth.

“Jason, let go of your brother.”

The word felt like a slap. Tim hid his wince by straightening out his clothes as Jason dropped his arm and stepped back.

“Tim.”

Tim looked up through his bangs when Bruce spoke his name, then back down as he fiddled uselessly with the cuffs of his sleeves.

“My ride should be here in a minute,” Tim said. It was easier to speak with a steady voice, to stay where he was instead of bolting for the closest window, if he kept his eyes off the Waynes. “I don’t know why you’re here, but you shouldn’t be.”

“Tim, what are you doing?” Dick’s voice was soft and vulnerable, like the underbelly of an overturned puppy. The part of Tim that needed to help, needed to fix, needed to soothe leaned toward the sound, but Tim held himself ruthlessly back.

“He’s running away,” Damian answered, his normally high voice almost a snarl. “Running away like the coward that he is.”

Tim turned away from them all, eyes deliberately on the cuffs he was rolling as he walked to the kitchenette. Damian’s insult bounced off without making a scratch, but the implication stuck. So they knew he was going. And they were here to...?

“Kon?” he guessed. He should have known quitting the Titans would make it through the Kent grapevine.

“So it’s true?” Dick again, sounding like Tim had kicked him in the gut. “You were going to move and not tell us?”

Tim fought to keep his movements smooth and unhurried, though he was sure Cass could read the tension in every twitch. He poured himself a glass of water and leaned against the counter.

“Son,” Bruce began, his voice low and soft like a far-off rumble of thunder. Tim couldn’t stop the corner of his mouth from twitching downward. “You quit the Titans. You quit patrol. And now you’re moving across the country? Tell us what’s going on.”

Tim took a sip of his water and tried to still his scrambling thoughts. He knew these people. As little as they knew him, he knew _them_. He just needed to figure out what to say to make them go. But he was panicking. He couldn’t remember the last time he had the weight of so many eyes pressed against him, weighing down his narrow shoulders.

“I don’t understand why you’re all making such a big deal of this,” Tim said finally. To his relief, his voice didn’t tremble or pitch uncontrollably. He spoke smoothly, the way he had dozens of times to the WE board. “The Titans will manage without me. My patrol route is already covered. Did you really think I would leave any of my responsibilities unhandled?”

“Tim, that’s—”

“You idiot, do—”

“Oh come on—”

“Tim—”

“No—“

Despite himself, Tim retreated slightly from the chorus of denials. He didn’t understand why they were here or why their expressions were twisted into such a range of emotion. He had done right by them. He had allowed them the graceful separation of a wordless exit. So why were they _here_?

“You know that’s not what this is about, son.” Bruce was using his negotiator voice, the soft, firm tones that lulled hostage-takers into complacency and lured jumpers off ledges. It made Tim’s teeth grit. How dare Bruce talk to him like he was the one unhinged, like he was the one who didn’t see what needed to be done. When Bruce reached for him, he jerked his shoulder away.

“I don’t need your permission,” Tim snarled, fear cloaking itself with prickly, clawing anger. “Is that what you think? That you can keep me here? You can’t.”

Tim’s hand shook as it clenched the cup, so he set it down, afraid the glass would shatter under the strain. The trembling hands disappeared into his pockets, bony wrists pressed to his hips as he edged toward the door, ice-blue gaze flying from face to face.

“I did my job. I did it, and it’s done. You can’t make me stay. I can’t—I can’t stay. I can’t—”

Tim didn’t miss the way the colors of outrage and frustration shifted on their faces, lightening and metamorphosing into shades of confusion and concern. No! No, that was wrong. They weren’t supposed to be worried for him. He wasn’t their worry, wasn’t their problem. He was supposed to fix things, to take the worries away. Why were they looking at him like that?

Bruce’s hand landed on Tim’s shoulder, a soft touch for the older man, but to Tim it carried the weight of a bear paw gripping his bony frame. Bruce was saying something, still using that cursed voice made for children and the unhinged. The voice that said he _cared_ and everything was going to be _just fine, we’ll fix it together, just wait and see_. His other hand reached for Tim’s head, to touch his cheek, maybe, or to cradle his face. He was boxing Tim in, the others crowded around on either side.

Tim kept retreating and they kept coming, trapping him, cornering him. They were saying his name, arguing, squawking like a flock of vultures over a slab of carrion. He’d only wanted to leave quietly. To slip off like a good nanny while the children flew their kites in the clear blue sky, to wipe his tears where no one could see and continue on to another life. Why couldn’t they give him that little consolation?

“Talk to us. We just want to help, s—”

“I’m not your son!” Tim roared. He knocked Bruce’s hands away, skin stinging against skin as he broke free. “Stop calling me that! I’m not your son, and I never was.”

Tim raised trembling hands to his temples, rubbing at the pain, clawing at the too-long strands of hair that clung to his forehead and scraped at his eyes.

“Don’t lie to me, Bruce. I have _never_ lied to you, not to any of you, so don’t lie to me now. I’m no one’s son, I’m no one’s brother, I’m no one—”

His breath hissed and hiccuped out a tight throat and between clenched teeth. He had spent his tears days ago and had no more to give to this family, so why was the room wavering and indistinct?

Tim gulped down an audible breath and looked up at Bruce. “I’m no one. I’m just the clingy kid next door you couldn’t get rid of.”

Just Urkel, the kid they couldn’t keep out. Just Mary Poppins, staying until the winds changed. The winds were blowing west now, blowing him onward, and everyone knew you couldn’t fight the wind.

Tim sagged against the wall, feeling like he had pulled his own plug and his charge was slowly winding down. He hated raising his voice, hated sounding like Jack, hated drawing attention to himself, to his needs, to his despair and anger. When he spoke again, his voice was low, splintered, and hollow.

“I said I’d stay until everything was better. Until everyone was... happy.”

_Everyone but me._

Tim swallowed, pushing hard against the sobs trying to climb up his throat.

“Everyone’s fine. You don’t need me anymore. I told you, Bruce. I told you I’d stay until you didn’t need me anymore.”

His lungs rattled as he sucked in a breath and dragged a hand across his eyes. It was his fault for delaying, for pretending, for ignoring that they had passed their need for him. He was the ingrown hair, the splinter that had scabbed over. If he stayed, their lives would fester and he would rot.

“I’m sorry. I stayed too long. I should have... I shouldn’t have waited so long.”

The room was silent. Tim couldn’t lift his gaze again. He didn’t want to see their looks of disgust and pity. Even Damian would pity him, he knew, because even the Demon Brat wasn’t without a heart, and it was easy to pity a miserable thing that posed no threat. He couldn’t bear to make himself see that.

Still, he wouldn’t have guessed that Damian would be the first to speak.

“You truly are an idiot, Timothy.” 

Tim flinched at the words that flicked like pebbles against his skin, not painful but unpleasant and intrusive. But instead of his usual spiteful snarl, Damian’s tone was something new. Something different.

“Is that what you think you’re supposed to be? Needed? You are correct. You’re not.” There was a small scuffle, soles sliding on hardwood and the soft smacking of shushing hands being batted away. Damian spoke over the noise. “My mother needs me. My grandfather _needs_ me. It is not as pleasant a state as you might imagine it to be.”

Did he imagine the bitter note in Damian’s voice? Tim kept his burning, watery eyes on his shoes and resisted the urge to be drawn in by the boy’s words, though he had never heard Damian speak so directly against his other family before. The Waynes were not the al Ghuls. It was pointless to compare the two.

If Damian was the least likely person to speak first, Jason was close behind on that improbable list, but his voice was the one to rise next.

“The kid’s right. You think I would have hated you so much if you were just needed?” 

Tim only knew Jason’s younger voice from old home movies and the odd press recording. Death, cigarettes, and the Pit had deepened and distressed the sliding street accent, rubbing it raw on a bed of gravel and metal. Jason didn’t seem to miss his old voice, instead wielding his new one like another weapon to intimidate and unsettle. But when he spoke like this, full of reluctant good intent and lacking his usual caustic bite, Tim could almost hear the boy that used to be, the one who used to believe that change was just over the horizon before he was buried six feet beneath it.

Jason chuckled, a humorless, scoffing noise. “I hated you because you were wanted, Replacement. I don’t know what the beginning was like for you, but by the time I showed up, you were family, whether I wanted you to be or not.”

“Brother,” Cass agreed quietly.

“We love you, Timbo.”

Tim was already shaking his head, trying to cut Dick off, trying to stop all of this before Bruce felt compelled to speak. He wouldn’t let them lie to him, wouldn’t let them twist what he knew had to be true, no matter how desperately he wanted to give in.

“You don’t even notice if I’m not around.” Tim thought back to that night in the den, how easy it had been to slip away unseen and unremarked. He looked up, eyes glinting with unshed tears and a despairing rage. “I was gone for _weeks_ and not one of you noticed. It would have been so easy. A couple hours more, and I would’ve been gone and we wouldn’t have to go through this... this...”

Thin fingers gestured at the charade they had forced him through, then lowered to cover his face. “Why won’t you let me go?”

Again Bruce’s hands touched his shoulders, just the fingertips this time, and Tim pulled away. But his reaction lacked the fire from before, and Bruce merely reached again and again until Tim stood slumped in his grasp. His palm encircled Tim’s bony shoulders, calloused fingers splayed across winged shoulder blades. He always made Tim feel so small.

“Timothy.” Tim had expected Bruce to sound firm and paternal, perhaps, or maybe sad and pitying. Instead his name rang like a smack to the cheek of a hysteric.

“Listen to me,” Bruce commanded, sure and thunderous. “You are part of this family.”

When Tim began to shake his head and pull away, Bruce tightened his grip. “No. You _will_ listen to this. You are part of this family. You are my son, and nothing will change that. Do you hear me?”

_Stop lying, stop lying, please, I can’t do this anymore, please stop—_

Tim sucked in a sharp, thin breath as Bruce’s hands slowly slid from his shoulders to his back, then around until Tim was fully enveloped in Bruce’s arms. Tim wanted to fight, to throw up his arms and push Bruce back. But he couldn’t remember the last time he had been held—by Bruce, by anyone. 

Tim’s head fell forward and rested wearily against Bruce’s breastbone, ear brushing against Bruce’s bicep. Bruce dipped his head and bowed his shoulders until Tim was shielded from the others, cocooned in a tiny world of two. Bruce smelled of the specific mix of detergent, aftershave, and cologne that had always meant _safety_ and _belonging_. Tim fought not to wrap his arms around Bruce’s waist and bury his nose into his shirt.

“You are Timothy Jackson Drake-Wayne,” Bruce murmured into his ear.

Tim rocked his head back and forth against Bruce’s chest, despairing and disbelieving, but Bruce continued, “You are my son as surely as if you’d been born a Wayne. You are their brother. No matter who you have been or who you believe yourself to be, that’s who you _are_ , Tim. You are needed and you are _wanted_. We want you because we love you. Not because of what you do or what you can do for us. Because of who you are. I am so sorry if we ever made you feel otherwise.”

This was a dream. It wasn’t real. Bruce didn’t apologize. Bruce wasn’t a person who hugged, or held someone like Tim. Bruce didn’t talk about love.

“I had no idea how lucky I was when you showed up on my doorstep. You saved me. Not Batman. _Me_. Because you’re brilliant and brave and generous and kind.”

He couldn’t listen to this. Tim tried to pull away, but Bruce’s free hand moved up Tim’s back and rested, warm and dry, on the back of Tim’s neck, cradling him gently.

“If... if you still want to go, I won’t force you to stay. But leaving Gotham does not mean you’re leaving this family. You’re ours, no matter how far you run or how long you stay away. Family isn’t blood. It’s a choice, and I choose you every time. You’re _mine_ , Tim. And I’m not giving you up.”

Later, if asked, Tim wouldn’t be able to pinpoint what had broken him. The hug, maybe, so warm and sure, like the ones Dick used to describe from when he was little, before life and Gotham had beaten any softness out of Bruce. Maybe the words, unlike Batman but seemingly plucked from the deepest parts of Tim’s heart. Or maybe it was the way Bruce’s voice trembled at the end, certainty wavering at the thought of Tim leaving, like his absence was something horrible, his presence something precious. 

Whatever the reason, Tim broke. A sob punched through his chest with the force of too many years, and his knees buckled. Tim ended up in Bruce’s lap on the floor of the kitchen, arms wrapped around his dad, clinging with a terrified strength. He wept as if his heart was breaking, or mending for the first time—deep, gulping sobs that echoed in the small apartment while Bruce kept his arms around his son and his lips pressed to Tim’s temple.

Tim cried until there were no more tears left to give, pressed dry by the unfathomable weight of the afternoon. He was needed. He was _wanted_. He felt like he had been falling for years—through empty houses and unanswered calls, past unseeing eyes and withheld hands and closed doors and calendars’ worth of unshared days—only to finally, _finally_ be caught. So even once the tears stopped, he stayed where he was, surrounded by scarred arms and a steady heartbeat in his ear. And Bruce let him stay.

When Tim eventually lifted his head, bleary-eyed and fuzzy-headed in the honey-gold light of the afternoon, he saw his siblings scattered around him. Some hovered nearby with tissues or a glass of water, while others sat further away but present, waiting for when Tim looked their way so they could smile or nod. They each hugged him in turn, with one arm or two, roughly or gently, but all heartfelt with the unspoken understanding of siblings that tomorrow they would be back to quarrels and pranks and wrestling matches on the den rug without a word spoken about today. But today was for family. For hugs and murmured apologies, and for promises of better behavior.

Tim didn’t take his taxi. He missed his flight. Weeks of careful planning had to be undone just as carefully, with resignations recalled, credits retransferred, and apologies made. He didn’t mind. His clock was running again, ticking steadily onward. Instead of a countdown, it was merely a beat, a rhythm that he could sway to, a current that kept him moving steadily along. The hands of his family kept him afloat, supporting him and steadying him whenever he crossed a wave that threatened to drag him under again. 

The days following his breakdown had more hands than ever after words got around to Steph and Babs, to the Titans and the Kents. They all visibly worked to reach out to him more, to extend explicit invitations instead of the implicit ones that he so often missed; to drop backup batteries into his bag, reminders of the weeks of texts and calls he had missed while accidentally letting his phone die; to text or call with a funny story, a casual complaint, or just because. 

Tim smiled as he affixed the photo of his family to his fridge door. It was a messy view, blurred and off-kilter. The bottom quarter of the frame was engulfed by Dick’s bright blue eyes, partially closed with laughter as he called for the others to _look over here, doofi._ But he managed to get the entire unruly bunch into the selfie, and the messiness didn’t look out of place with the other photos, scrawled notes, and mementos magnetized to the fridge. Messiness was part of being a Wayne, and Tim was okay with that. They weren’t perfect, his family, but they were his, and he was theirs. And that made it real.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who stuck around for the weekly updates and cheered on my poor, emotionally constipated sons! I may have listened to "Words Fail" on repeat while writing this final installment, so I hope I was able to capture at least a fraction of that emotion.


End file.
